


Below the Surface

by Kithas



Series: Pokémon Reborn Fanfic Series [4]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pokemon Reborn
Genre: F/F, Friendship, Gen, I'm Still Bad At Tagging, Pokemon Battles, Pokemon Gym Leaders, Pokemon Reborn Spoilers, Pokemon Training, Post-Canon, fangame, part 1 of 2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24290800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kithas/pseuds/Kithas
Summary: Even if things look uneventful, even if we already won, if it all ended good, we have to be prepared for the case we are mistaken. Because it doesn't end. Nothing Never Ends.First half of the story of the disappearance of Heather Molinar.
Relationships: Shelly Citra/Heather Molinar
Series: Pokémon Reborn Fanfic Series [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1376917
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Below the Surface

"... I had just KOed his Charizard", Avani said, making a pause for effect. "And I told the kid, I told him: 'You know, I am a ground-type trainer, right? I don't care your Pikachu is your best friend. Do you really think sending him will change anything from the other two times you sent him?"

"Oh, lord" Wide-eyed, her friend threw her head back while showing her hands, as if asking "Why?" to an invisible God. "I am so glad I resigned my reserve Gym leader duties, so I don't have to deal with those pieces of work"

"I know, right? One would think, them being high-level trainers..." Avani shrugged again, also amused. It was nice to practice small-talk and exchange tales with Sandy once in a while. It was a very good idea from Adrienn to put her in charge of the ethical committee who oversaw the Azurine Research Center, and they often joked xe had domesticated her. They had won the region back from the disaster, and, even if it was bubbling with activity now from east to west (talented trainers who looked for challenge in Reborn's league were usually pretty well-to-do), environmental projects still had a way to do. It wasn't pretty when the environmentalist extremists confronted the team that tried to renovate Byxbysion Ward, but being put in charge of the official team who managed that kind of efforts really soothed Sandy down.

"So, heard something from xem? How are Adrienn and Aya doing that far away?" Avani asked. In theory, she was there only to have a checkup done to her Gastrodon, who seemed to have caught an illness who was polluting some poodles up north in her place. But she decided she wanted to catch up with her allies, no, her friends, and she was going to like it. A strange green German shepherd-like dog pokémon stopped by, to say hello too, and when Avani scratched it behind its ears, it said "Guard! Guard!". The friends looked at each other, and smiled. "Wouldn't it be more like 'woof woof', big Z?" The Zygarde tilted its head, and, nodding, answered 'oh, right, my apologies', before going out to patrol the island as it liked to. It was an intriguing pokémon, and they hadn't still made clear if his dog-like 10% forms could communicate themselves over great distances (it would be a great warning system in case a disaster struck some part of the region) but thanks to Devon's (The _real_ Devon, this time) funding, they were going forward in that. "And, are you going to celebrate your new business partnership with them?" Avani asked, and Sandy laughed.

"Oh, yeah, we're storming Sweet co. This weekend to protest for their unethical treatment of Aromatisses, we're counting on you to deal with the cops, are you in?" Avani blinked, those days were supposed to be in the past for the activist. After a moment, she laughed. "Come on, now I work for the government, I cannot allow myself to occupy things anymore. We're booking Madame Meganium's new vegan restaurant to celebrate this Saturday, and yes, I'm still counting on you".

"I don't even think I'll be in the city by then" Avani smiled, nervously. "Look, I did only come to find about my Pokémon’s illness, and..."

"You know you can't do this forever, don't you?"

"Do what?"

"To escape, to shut yourself in just to avoid dealing with all of this". Avani averted her eyes, looking at the window. No, she didn't want to hear it again. "You have to deal with the consequences of what you did". Sandy pointed at her. "Come on, Avani, you made all of this possible! You cannot look away and just expect people not to look at you. You're the only patron of this research center, Arceus be damned!" She stood up, facing her friend. "At this point, you're almost one step ahead all of as, girl! Don't act as if you were just scared of everything now!"

Scared of everything? No. Avani stood up, straight up glaring at Sandy, making her step back, but a buzzing through the open window and a bug crossing between the two cut her answer short. A shiny Ribombee circled around Avani, attracting her attention. "What? Anna!" It was not the real Anna, of course, but Shelly's pokémon. "What are you doing here?". The Ribombee circled excitedly around her, crying as if hurrying her, and it was obvious it wanted to be followed. Avani took her jacket back and followed the pokémon out of the building, not before throwing a meaningful look in Sandy's direction. And, when she left, Sandy felt like the breath that had avoided her finally came to her lungs and all the noises reached her again.

Scared of everything? No. Avani wasn't scared of everything now. She lived in the wilderness, just her gym building and her place where she would have to face angered predators the size of steam locomotives. But it was just her place, a humble gym leader up in the mountains east of Route 4. What would happen if she came back, Lady Avani the Reborn Champion, the Avani who had done all she knew she had done? Avani knew well she couldn't escape all of it, Eclipse, Corey, all the messed-up things she had seen and done, a lot of which she didn't even began to understood. But there was somebody who did all of it, someone in control. A White-Haired Girl who traversed through all that warped reality, who saw a power able to reduce the world to pieces and make it anew, and she was there.

How could anybody come back from that? How could anybody live up to those expectations? That was the reason of her fallout with Adrienn. Xe expected her to be the champion, the main character of Reborn City. With or without Avani's cooperation.

And, yet, every time she went downtown and visited Reborn City, things usually ended up like now: With Avani following Shelly's dashing pokémon, flying north with Golurk until they were over the Beryl Ward. She let the exhausted Ribombee rest in her shoulder upon landing, and went straight up to the building that was over the stairs, the former Beryl Gym. A sinister place indeed, and not only for the ominous things that happened in the past in there. Before its sealed doors was Shelly, a frightened, quiet, and lonely Shelly. "I'm here", Avani greeted her, noticing there was nobody else around. Did Ribombee search only her for help, even if there were other friends closer to Beryl? "Shelly. Shelly." The purple-haired girl looked back at Avani. "Are you okay? Are you hurt? What happened?"

"She-she's not here..." The look on Shelly's eyes was similar to the look the day Avani met her. "I came here thinking she had another episode, you know? She was starting to come to accept it, what her father did, how to feel about it. She was getting better" Shelly was shaking, the poor thing. There was only one thing that could make her like that. "I thought that maybe she had come here, just to say goodbye and everything, or to- I don't know, this is all sealed, and there are no backdoors..."

"Okay" Avani tried to calm her down, her hands into Shelly's shoulders. "You are telling me Heather is missing, right? It's okay, we'll find her, we'll find her, and then you will tell her off for not telling anyone". Shelly was right to be worried. Heather always was a rebellious kid, from he times when her Salamence's head was bigger than her torso. She did take a beating in the dealings with Team Meteor, and it was thanks to Shelly's support that Heather had become a fine young woman, and one of the only old friends that regularly visited Avani in her gym. But one was always afraid of that something, that look over her eyes, probably inherited from Corey, that made her friends fear she would end in a bad place. Had she crashed, finally? Avani feared the day she did, because her success, was also Avani's success. If somebody like Heather went on, Avani should be able to. "Okay, Shelly, listen to me, we're going to the Jasper Ward", Avani said, with her arm over her shoulder, as if to shield her, while directing themselves south. "And you're going to tell me everything. I saw you both just yesterday, right? What happened after that?"

Carefully, not letting the young Citra give in, Avani managed to know that there was nothing bad going on with Heather before disappearing. As she knew, they had been thinking about going to the beach west of Azurine Lake, maybe visiting the Belrose sisters in Calcenon and Labradorra... They made plans. She kissed Shelly just before going to bed. And, by morning, she was nowhere to be seen. It was not like Heather to just disappear, without warning her, or her friends. It wasn't just Shelly's fear. The girl had been spirited away. And the first stop to finding her, while Shelly was telling everything again to the officers, was the last man who tried to kidnap her.

"Hello, Sigmund". The man who used to be one of the proudest doctors in the region, owning the hulking central building, was now a shadow of his former self. His blond hair, unkempt, mixed with his beard, darkening his features, but his eyes were still inscrutable. “I think you may know why I'm here"

"The escaped inmate, who you came to visit yesterday?" He tried. Huh, that was strange, Avani hadn't paid the jail a visit in ages. Well, she wouldn't let the doctor confuse her.

"Heather has gone missing"

"What? Already?" Sigmund didn't look a little bit surprised. "I hope this didn't take you by surprise. Young Mrs. Molinar was due to disappear sooner or later. Her bottled issues would explode sometime. But I’m afraid I’m still at loss for the reason for this reunion”

“It’s not a mystery your resolve to, let’s say, “fix” Heather. And several acquaintances, assistants, students and enthusiasts have visited you in here, looking to continue your… job”

“You talk about my job like I was some of serial killer”, Connal answered. “When I wasn’t anything more than a doctor whose only mistake was trying to help the wrong group of punks”.

“Help? You tortured innocent kids, abusing them while they were at your care!”

“Untrained people usually fail to see the benefits of unconventional therapy” He shrugged, impervious to the hate he instilled in Avani. “But, as for your query, my duty with Mrs. Molinar ended with her coming of age”

“Yeah, you’re not in charge anymore, Dr. Connal, and, if I get notice you or any of your assistants outside had something to do…” Avani stood up, she shouldn’t have come there. It only gave her more bitterness, more painful memories of the past.

When she was about to exit, the last words of Dr. Connal followed her. “How long? How long until you break?” She stopped, looking at him dead in the eye. “It doesn’t take a trained psychologist to know your state is not so different from the one Heather was in. It would be truly horrible if something bad happened to your friend, wouldn’t it?”

She didn’t want to listen, and, luckily, when she got up to the police station section of the building, Shelly was no longer alone. “So, you’re saying Heather did take her pokémon with her?” Victoria was asking. It was a short trip from the Grand Central, and even with the mountains of work she usually had to deal with, Victoria wouldn’t let a friend’s disappearance go without helping, even if the cops were also ready to do their jobs. “Then, it _is_ possible at all she did leave by her own foot, right?”

“No, it isn’t like her”, Shelly repeated. “Not telling me anything, or leaving a note… Look, Vic, I know how I sound, but I’m not just clingy, and I know Heather… If she wants to just have some space or blow off steam, she tells me and that’s it”. Shelly frowned. Deep inside, that insecure little bookworm that lived inside the library, neglected by her brother Bugsy and almost friendless, was still there.

“I know, honey, we’re just… trying to follow her steps, right?” Victoria calmed her, before turning to the help desk. “How’s that search going, officer?”

“There is no record of her checking in either in Grand Station, around the Underground Railnet, nor out of the Grand Gates, Mrs. Marlow”, the officer answered. “We could look internal security footage around the city in the case it brings out any clue about her current whereabouts”. After the Restoration of the City, a discreet security system had been built around the city, usually covering gyms, other important buildings like ward entrances or the Grand Hall.

“Look, Shelly, this is good. This means Heather is still here, in the city” Victoria tried to encourage her. “We’re going to search for her, and we’re going to find her”.

* * *

But finding someone wasn’t always the best outcome. That was what the own Heather had learned some hours ago, when she kicked the rubble blocking the entrance to one of the most forgotten and off the beaten path corners in the city. With her usual defiant demeanor, she crossed her arms, and dared the one who had attracted her there. “Okay, now I know you cannot run anymore. And now, you’re going to explain me who the hell are you and why do you want me to kick your face in so much”.

Then, the shadow she had been following stepped into the circle of light, and she couldn’t help it but flinch a little. Because, from the stern and cold gaze to the purple hair, before her stood one man she had not seen in many, many years. “Hello, Heather”. Before her, from the shadows, Corey Molinar looked at her.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to make a story more plot-oriented than the others! I hope you like it, and don't doubt I'll be writing the second part as soon as I can!


End file.
